The Microhistory of Martial Law: Ordinary Citizens’ Experience of December 3 Treason appearing on Instagram

This study reconstructs the December 3 treason through a microhistorical lens, focusing on the experiences of ordinary citizens. Instagram was selected as the primary source best suited to capture microhistorical characteristics such as the experiences of non-dominant class, participant observation, thick description, and narrative writing. From 10,000 Instagram posts containing the keyword ‘martial law’ during December 2024, a total of 6,688 posts were extracted through a pre-processing procedure and used for analysis. Instagram content is rich with personal voices and everyday lives that are difficult to access through official records. Citizens expressed perplexity and anger in response to the unexpected political crisis, and after the hearings of the National Assembly, experienced heightened fear and a longing for the restoration of democratic everydayness amid political instability and economic crisis. Following the passage of President Yoon Suk-yeol’s impeachment bill, posts related to martial law were reduced by half, but protests demanding Yoon’s arrest and the ratification of impeachment continued. During this period, a festival-like tradition of “K-rally” characterized by solidarity and camaraderie took root, with citizens defending democracy in their own personal distinctiveness. Instagram at this time overflowed with discussions of historical consciousness, including analogies to the May 18 Gwangju Democratization Movement and conservative discourses on the need to protect the hard-won tradition of democracy. Notably, there was also an awakening to the necessity of strengthening humanities’ literacy to prevent the recurrence of national crises such as treason. By microhistorically analyzing Instagram－a source rarely utilized in previous researches－this experimental study seeks to recover and incorporate the emotions, attitudes, and actions of ordinary citizens, often neglected by mainstream historiography, into the historical studies.